Lexis Special 2 : « Impoliteness / Impolitesse »

3

IInnttrroodduuccttiioonn

““DDoo yyoouu wwaannnnaa ttaallkk aabboouutt iimmppoolliitteenneessss?? HHooww rruuddee!!””

Ever since the publication of Politeness – Some Universals in Language Use in 1978, the

study of verbal interactions has been somewhat biased and “linguistic politeness” has

established itself as the main research area. Brown & Levinson’s model has of course been

adapted and criticised but it remains highly influential. More recently, however, a new

research paradigm has emerged, that of impoliteness.

Many scholars, like Culpeper [1996], [2003], [2005] and [2010] or Bousfield [2008], now

endeavour to counterbalance the previous theory and study the notion of “impoliteness” more

thoroughly than ever before. Is the study of impoliteness bound to replace the study of

politeness? Is it simply a way of compensating for a research area that has been neglected for

too long or is it the beginning of a new approach to the study of verbal interactions

encompassing both politeness and impoliteness under the umbrella term of (im)politeness?

The articles of this issue of Lexis are the proceedings of the mini-conference organised by

the Centre d’Etudes Linguistiques of the Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3. The purpose of

this conference was to prepare the theoretical ground for the conference on “Linguistic

Impoliteness and Rudeness” to be held in May 2011 at the Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3.

In 2008 Denis Jamet & Manuel Jobert organised a conference on “Euphemism” (L’Empreinte

de l’Euphémisme – Tours et détours, Jamet & Jobert (eds), Paris, L’harmattan, 2010) in which

many presentations were devoted to euphemisms construed as mitigating devices and

dysphemisms interpreted as Face Threatening Acts.

We should like to thank Professor Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (Université Lumière –

Lyon 2) for accepting to be the keynote speaker of this mini-conference. Her expertise and

availability at this time were highly appreciated by the participants.

The first three articles of this issue are devoted to considerations relative to politeness and

impoliteness. Manuel Jobert (Université Jean Moulin – Lyon 3) assesses the importance of

studies on impoliteness in the present context and advocates a global approach to

(im)politeness. Olivier Simonin (Université de Perpignan) tackles (im)politeness in

connexion with Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Sperber & Wilson’s Relevance Principle.

Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (Université Lumière – Lyon 2) introduces several nuances,

such as “overpoliteness” or “polirudeness” in order to obtain a better theoretical grasp of the

complexity of what verbal interactions are about. She draws examples from several political

debates featuring Nicolas Sarkozy and from everyday exchanges taking place in educational

settings. With �adia Lahiana (Institut Supérieur des Langues de Tunis), we remain in the

context of French political debates, construed as a means of exposing conflict talk. Valerija

Sinkeviciute (University of Vilnius) studies first encounter conversations in Spanish and in

English, comparing positive and negative politeness in two movies. Rudy Loock (Université

Charles de Gaulle – Lille 3) adopts a syntactical approach to (im)politeness and studies how

appositive relative clauses may be used to soften the possible FTA. Along the same lines,

Graham Ranger (Université d’Avignon et des Pays de Vaucluse) analyses the different uses

of You see! as a parenthetical comment clause in initial, median and final positions as well as

a politeness marker. Finally, Julie �eveux (Université de la Sorbonne – Paris 4) analyses

metaphors as potentially impolite speech acts.

4 Lexis Special 2 : « Impoliteness / Impolitesse »

The present issue gives a fairly good indication of what (im)politeness studies may entail.

Be they theoretical, applied, comparative, syntactic or rhetorical, the different approaches are

varied and cover a wide range of issues.

Bibliography

BOUSFIELD Derek, Impoliteness in Interaction, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, 2008.

BOUSFIELD Derek & LOCHER Miriam (eds), Impoliteness in Language, Berlin, Mouton de

Guyter, 2008.

BROW� P. & LEVI�SO� S., Politeness, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978.

CULPEPER Jonathan, “Towards an anatomy of impoliteness”, Journal of Pragmatics, 25,

1996: 349-367

CULPEPER Jonathan (with BOUSFIELD D. and WICHMA�� A.), “Impoliteness revisited: With

special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects”, Journal of Pragmatics 35, 2003:

1545-1579.

CULPEPER Jonathan, “Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The

Weakest Link”, Journal of Politeness Research 1, 2005: 35-72.

CULPEPER Jonathan, Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence, Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, to be published.

JAMET Denis & JOBERT Manuel (eds), Empreintes de l’Euphémisme. Tours et détours, Paris,

L’Harmattan, 2010.

KERBRAT-ORECCHIO�I Catherine, L’énonciation, Paris, Armand Colin, (1980) 1997.

KERBRAT-ORECCHIO�I Catherine, Les Interactions verbales, 3 vol., Paris, Nathan, 1990.

KERBRAT-ORECCHIO�I Catherine, Les Actes de langage dans le discours, Paris, Nathan,

2001.

KERBRAT-ORECCHIO�I Catherine, Le Discours de l’interaction, Paris, Armand Colin, 2005.

Denis Jamet

Manuel Jobert